everyday adventures in an ordinary classroom

Peek-a-WHO? Icebreaker Activity

Students don’t come back until next Tuesday, but at my school, we’ve had staff inservices all week long. Today we did some large-group icebreaker activities, one of which I thought could lend itself well to a nice icebreaker activity in level 2, or a fun way to practice Il s’appelle/Elle s’appelle in French 1. It’s called “Peek-a-Who.” I’m not teaching French 1 this year, so I’ll use it as a fun first-week activity with my French 2s.

Procedure.

Divide the class into two equal teams. (Team A and Team B, or whatever).

The teacher and one other person (since I have a student teacher, I’ll use him but if I didn’t, I would take a student volunteer and make them switch every few rounds with another student) hold up a big sheet/blanket/tarp that blocks Team A from seeing Team B.

One student on each team walks up to face the tarp (be sure that it’s a secret!)

The teacher and his/her +1 count to three and drop the tarp. The goal is for the two students on either side of the tarp to be the first to correctly identify their opponent by name, using Il s’appelle ________ or Elle s’appelle _________.

The student who correctly identifies his/her opponent by name and using the correct phrase gets to steal that person from the other team.

If the students don’t know each other’s names when the tarp is dropped, they can use the rest of their team for help.

The process repeats as long as desired – the team with the largest number of people at the end is the winner.